


The One Where Agent H Has PTSD

by Skyuni123



Series: men in black: international ficlets [1]
Category: Men in Black (Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Bulimia, Coping, Emetophobia, Gen, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 18:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19278652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyuni123/pseuds/Skyuni123
Summary: Agent H doesn't cope with Agent T's death quite as easily as it seems.





	The One Where Agent H Has PTSD

**Author's Note:**

> _TW: Story contains panic attacks, bulimia and suicide ideation._
> 
>  
> 
> Names are spelled phonetically. 
> 
> Aitch = H  
> Em = M  
> Tee = T  
> Ell = L  
> Cee = C
> 
> and so forth.

Things start coming back. 

 

After the revelation,  _ that  _ revelation, things start coming back. With a vengeance.

 

Aitch isn’t one to put much stock in dreams, hell, he’s seen some bizarre shit over the last few years when he’s been high on one alien drug or another, but these feel  _ real. _

 

And he doesn’t like it. 

 

The Neuralyzer has… effects. That much has been proven. There’s even a little lab down in the basement of the London office that only exists to refine and study the Neuralyzer tech - Aitch had stumbled into it during the office Christmas party a few years back and hadn’t found it especially interesting - but he’s sure they’ve never noticed anything like this.

 

A Neuralyzer wearing off? Memories coming back? 

 

If a Neuralyzer blast wore off, half of London and most of the world would be talking about aliens, but they’re not - he’s sure he would have noticed - so it must… just be him.

 

He doesn’t like it.

 

It’s probably something he should talk to the scientists, or Em, or  _ someone  _ about, but he doesn’t. They… don’t need to know.

 

He’s fine. 

  
  


_ He’s fucked. He scrabbles, blood pooling up around the gashes in his back, the tears in his suit, in a spatter on the metal floor of the Tower. It hurts. He can’t feel his legs. Why can’t he feel his legs? Tee is in the corner, held up against the wall by the Hive, a Lovecraftian nightmare, a tentacled freak.  _

 

_ He can’t see his gun. He needs his gun. He needs to  _ move. 

 

_ “Aitch-” He can read the pain in Tee’s eyes. Aitch knows he’s failing him.  _

 

_ Then a tentacle reaches out towards him and he- _

  
  


-slams back to consciousness and knocks his head against his desk, dizzily. Pain splinters through his nose, and he pulls back to see red.

 

_ Fuck. _

 

It’s not broken, but it’s a near thing, and it just won’t. Stop. Dripping.

 

“Sir?” The being who woke him looks concerned. She’s got pink hair, and he’s sure that if he tried, he could recognise her. “Your nose- can I help you?”

 

“What do you want?” He snaps, and fumbles around in his desk for something to use to stem the blood. 

 

“I have the dossiers from the Cel-” 

 

“Leave them.” Aitch waves her away, sharply, too sharply, and barely notices when she scurries from his office. He fumbles in his desk, runs across one of Em’s good pens, and everything hurts a little less, just for a moment. 

 

Then his nose drips and he’s bleeding all over the pen too. 

 

The only thing that he has to stop the bleeding is one of the handkerchiefs he inherited from Tee, neatly monogrammed with a T along one corner.

 

It stains immediately.

 

Fuck _.  _

  
  


_ It’s not Tee anymore, and Aitch needs to get away. He needs to tell someone. Needs to go to Oh, or even to Cee, like he’d even be able to do anything about it. He needs to tell the world.  _

 

_ With Tee as their figurehead, the Hive could do anything. Be anyone. Earth would be lost. _

 

_ But he can’t move.  _

 

_ He can’t even feel his legs anymore. The guilt is the only thing that hurts now.  _

 

_ “Pathetic.” The creature says, speaking with Tee’s voice. It plucks the Neuralyzer from Tee’s pocket and holds it in front of its body. “Terrans. All so weak. Breakable. Be a good boy.”  _

 

_ Then there’s a flash and he’s-  _

  
  


_ \-  _ standing on the railing of his balcony in the pouring rain.

 

He stumbles back to the safety of the balcony behind him, the ground swaying, and vomits greenish bile off the edge of the railing.

 

The world sways, then rights itself. His mouth burns. 

 

He doesn’t feel the rain.

 

But he locks his balcony door and hides the key somewhere where he doubts he could even find it completely sound of mind. 

 

What would be the point of dying? It’d just be another funeral the agency would have to organise, and he’d just take away from Tee’s memory.

 

It’d be  _ selfish.  _

 

Sleep doesn’t come easily that night, or for many nights after that.

  
  


Aitch is tapping on the table again during a meeting, and he can’t seem to make himself stop. His head hurts, and so does his stomach. Maybe it’s phantom pain, but maybe it’s hunger. It doesn’t matter. He’s  _ coping.  _

 

He’s sure everyone is noticing it, sure that they can tell that something is wrong, feels his heart thundering in his chest like he’s balanced on a knife’s edge during an op, and he can’t. Stop. It’s coming up to a year since Tee…’s departure, and how they’re thinking about naming a new weapon after him in the R&D lab and he just -

 

Can’t. 

 

He interrupts Ell from whatever she’s saying - and he doesn’t mean to do it, really he doesn’t, he just can’t  _ focus  _ \- and smiles, though he’s sure it’s just a facsimile at this point, and says, “Oh, I completely forgot. I’ve got a meeting with the Sularian ambassador in a few minutes, gotta run! Send me the minutes!” 

 

His escape feels a little like a cop-out, but he’s nauseous and frantic and his hands won’t stop sweating. 

 

Making himself throw up in the bathroom sink doesn’t quite seem to atone for the guilt hanging in the pit of his stomach, but it feels a little like penance at least. 

 

“You feeling alright, Sir?” Ess, who is a prep-school douche but very good at his job, turns on the tap next to him and starts washing his hands. “Not pregnant, are you?”

 

The thing is, even after discounting the complexities of human gender and all that, he mightn’t even be joking.

 

“No.” Aitch says, and squints at himself in the mirror.

 

He’s gaunt, dark circles under his eyes, and pale. It’s all very vampiric, which would probably go down quite well in some London alien clubs. It’s not very  _ him. _

 

He looks like shit. 

 

He should really talk to someone. 

 

He needs a drink.

  
  


_ “Nothing dramatic, eh?” Aitch smirks at Tee, playing everything up a little. He’s showboating, probably. Showing off, definitely.  _

 

_ He likes Tee, alright? He likes his praise, likes being treated well. No matter what Cee or any of the others say, he’ll do pretty much anything to get to work with the man in the field. _

 

_ “Nothing dramatic.” Tee says, far more reasonable, and rational. He always is.  _

 

_ Aitch isn’t one for that kind of stoicism. He holds his gun up, looks around. The room at the top of the Eiffel is quiet, despite the circumstances. It’s...odd. “Pretty quiet, eh? You’d think the Hive would make a bigger mess. Actually, boss, what has six eyes, sixteen tentacles and quacks like a duck?” _

 

_ “...What?” Tee says, grudgingly, though it’s clear that he doesn’t mind the distraction. Tee tends to let a lot of things slip when he’s around. _

 

_ “I don’t know either but-” _

 

_ Being slapped off his feet by a tentacle cuts the joke rather short.  _

 

_ “Tee!” Aitch yells, but it’s too late as another set of tentacles slams the older man against the wall and drags the gun from his grip.  _

 

_ Aitch rolls, climbs to his feet and starts firing. He only gets one shot off when- _

  
  


He stumbles out of bed without disturbing the alien man next to him and just manages to pull on his pants and shoes before the other man wakes.

 

It had been his fault.

 

Losing Tee…The infiltration of the Hive... Everything.

 

The guilt tightens his shoulders. Runs knots up his spine and through his heart. His head pounds and his hands sweat.

 

So, he goes to work.

  
  


Aitch tries to focus on writing up the month’s expenditure report, eyes blurring and a migraine pounding a rhythm through his head. He gets about four sentences in, writes the word “problem” five times, and then passes out at his desk.

 

He wakes up in hospital.

 

Molly is also there. 

 

She looks worried, which is strange of her. She doesn’t tend to look worried, usually annoyed, overjoyed, or fed up of his shit.

 

Worry is… strange.

 

“What the  _ fuck  _ have you been doing to yourself?” And it looks a little like she’s about to punch him.

 

He braces for the impact. 

 

It doesn’t come. 

 

Em swallows, harshly. “Dr Jones told me that you’re underweight. Dehydrated as well. She thinks- you’re-”

 

“I’m fine.” He says airly. Nothing has been more of a lie.

 

“She thinks you’re bulimic. Ess was swanning around, saying that you’re pregnant, but I  _ know  _ you, Henry. You look… terrible.” 

 

“Thanks,” he replies, but it doesn’t sting like it used to. “Cheers for the compliment.” 

 

“Don’t deflect me, Aitch. I am your  _ best friend,  _ and I thought you were dead yesterday when I found you. Give me the decency of an answer. What’s going on?”

 

And that hurts, yeah. Just a little. They’d not put a name on it, but… he trusts Em. Trusts her more than he ever really does with anyone. 

 

Near death tends to do that to people.

 

_ I’m fine,  _ he wants to say, but what comes out is, “Tee’s dead.”  

 

“Yes.” She folds her legs up onto the chair and leans in a little closer, as if urging him to go on. “He is.”

 

“Tee’s dead and it’s my fault and every time I go to sleep I see what the Hive tried to hide from me and I just. Can’t. Anymore with any of this. It’s my fault, Em. It’s my fault and every time I hear about him or see a photo of his face it hurts. It’s all my fault, and I saw what happened at the top of the Eiffel that day, how I didn’t save him, and I nearly walked off my balcony.”

 

He hears her gasp, from somewhere far, far away, but he can’t seem to stop talking. “I distracted him, and he got taken over and it just- It should have been me.”

 

“No.” Em grabs him by the hand. 

 

It’s the most contact they’ve had in weeks. 

 

“You cannot hold this against me once you’re better.” Em’s eyes are red. She’s swallowing again, heavily, and her grip on his hand is tight. It’s not too tight, though. More of a stabiliser. 

 

Em is grounding. It’s what she’s good at.

 

“...No promises.” He says, under his breath, and stares down at their joined hands. It doesn’t feel… good… to be here, but… everything out in the open? It feels- better. 

 

He’s a little less nauseous.

 

“A few years ago. My… girlfriend died.”

 

He moves to speak, to say something, but she just- stops him. She just carries on. “It’s strange to think it was only a few years ago, but it feels like forever. And I see her sometimes, out of the corner of my eyes or in my dreams, and I know she’s not there, and I know it’s not her, but I just keep on feeling like it was my fault.” 

 

Aitch doesn’t know how to respond. He doesn’t know what to say, so he says the hardest question of all. “...How’d she-”

 

“We were hiking up in the mountains. It was a muddy day, and the trail wasn’t dry. We were arguing about something dumb. Dinner that night or something. She got distracted, and the trail gave way. There wasn’t… anything I could do.” 

 

Em looks up at him, sadly. She wipes a tear from her cheek. “I thought it was my fault for years. Still do, sometimes. Love is one hell of a chemical reaction, huh?” 

 

“It sucks.” 

 

“Yeah.” She replies, without a hint of a lie. “But we need to move on. That’s what surviving is, isn’t it? Especially in a job like this? We’ve got to live for those who didn’t. Aitch, I can’t say that I know everything that happened. I can’t help you. I can’t  _ fix  _ you. But I  _ understand.  _ Talk to me. Please.”

 

So he does.

 

He talks and he talks until his doctor comes in to discuss his treatment plans and then he talks some more. 

 

And it’s not a cure. It’s barely the tip of the iceberg.

 

But it’s a start.

 

And maybe the knot of guilt inside his chest is a little bit looser by the time the night is out. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> if you're feeling dark, or alone, or helpless in a world that doesn't feel it, please talk to someone. it doesn't have to be a therapist, or a qualified person. there is someone out there who care about you and will listen. talk. 
> 
> give me prompts on the [ tumblr ](http://eph-em-era.tumblr.com)


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